ELECTRON DENSE CYTOPLASMIC PARTICLES AND CHRONIC INFECTION - A BACTERIAL PLEOMORPHY HYPOTHESIS

I hypothesize that dormant bacterial genomes in the form of intracytop lasmic dense bodies are a mechanism for bacterial persistence, and may cause infections systematically overlooked in clinical medicine. Cell wall-defective bacteria may be involved in latent and chronic infecti on and may retain their pathogenicity. Persisting small, electron dens e, elementary bodies derived from cell wall-defective bacteria seem to have cell and tissue tropisms correlated with a variety of chronic hu man diseases, notably kidney infections. These dense bodies bear a rem arkable resemblance to the membrane bounded dense core particles of un known origin demonstrated at the ultrastructural level in various tiss ues.